我国独立董事独立性的两个问题

独立性是独立董事制度赖以建立和存在的基础。影响和制约我国独立董事独立性的因素主要有独立董事制度缺乏法律明确定位、独立董事任职条件不严密、选任程序不合理、行权不畅、报酬问题以及任期问题。应当明确独立董事的法律定位、建立独立董事控制下的专业委员会、确立独立董事采取公告与回避制度、充分发挥声誉激励作用、建立独立董事自律组织自律规范独立董事行为以及营造良好的外部环境和机制。     

欧盟《非合同之债法律适用条例》评析

《非合同之债法律适用条例》实现了欧盟非合同之债法律选择规则的统一,是欧盟国际私法"共同体化"的重要进展。《条例》在法律选择的一般规则中采取结果发生地、意思自治、共同属人法与例外条款相结合的做法,同时规定了具体关系的冲突规范以及法律选择中的其他问题。《条例》为我国非合同之债法律选择立法提供了借鉴。     

Gender differences and equality issues in Europe: critical aspects of gender mainstreaming policies

Gender mainstreaming is the major global strategy for the promotion of gender equality. Clear intergovernmental mandates for gender mainstreaming have been developed for all the major areas of work of the United Nations and the European Commission, including disarmament, poverty reduction, macro-economics, health, education and trade. The evaluation of equal opportunities mainly focuses on qualification measures for unemployed women and improvements in childcare facilities, and on consideration of gender mainstreaming in other policy areas as well as macro-economic effects on employment and unemployment of women. It is evident that the promotion of qualification measures and childcare facilities increases the activity rate of women, although there remain doubts about the quality and sustainability of many measures and the impact on families. In particular this article focuses on the relation between gender mainstreaming and equality issues to examine whether and how the debate on the topic is a real way to improve equality without missing gender differences and women's rights.     

The Tunnel at the End of the Light: the Crisis of Transition in Hungary

The economic, political and social transition processes of the last two decades, far from being in harmony, clearly have a detrimental rather than an enriching influence on each other. These processes will never become harmonised just by themselves in a natural fashion. The worst obstacle of a successful transformation is that the chief actors, such as the government, the market and the representatives of the society. The Prince, the Merchant and the Citizen do not show the necessary commitment, competence and determination to create a new, effective type of partnership. This is a challenge which urgently demands answers on all levels of governance, economic and social life. This must be done in the frames of local communities, and on the regional, the European and the global levels. Nearly twenty years after the political turnabout, Hungary now needs a new social contract and must lay down the ethical, political, institutional and intellectual foundations for its twenty-first century democracy.

Governing Deviance in Public Space through Mayoral Orders: Fields Mismatch and Metropolitan Turbulence

This article addresses the issue of policy change and its consequences on the organizational field and institutional context, looking at the role of an instrument transfer process. We adopt a political sociology approach to policy instruments to account for the impact that the introduction of a securitarian instrument, the mayoral order, had on the implementation process of a social policy. Through a genealogy of the instrument we identify a constitutive, normative and cognitive dimension. Our aim is to explain the interaction between these institutional dimensions, the re‐definition of the organizational field of the policy, and the dynamics of metropolitan politics. Following a synthesis of the policy process and the institutional arrangements where the policy is implemented, we show how the instrument transfer triggered a division within the organizational field, and the rise of institutional tensions amongst local authorities. In the conclusion, we identify the institutional dimensions of the instruments and the policy implementation scale as elements that are to interact with public‐private relationships and institutional arrangements, and that have an impact on implementation process and policy outcome.     

Pension reforms in EU11 countries: An evaluation of post‐socialist pension policies

This article evaluates the pension policy pathways of the 11 former state socialist nations that have joined the European Union since 2004. Focusing primarily on the post‐2004 period, the analysis discusses the most important measurable outcomes of these countries’ pension reforms, in terms of poverty alleviation, pension adequacy and fiscal sustainability. Going beyond the quantifiable concepts, we also investigate the quality of the 11 countries’ pension systems in terms of equity as well as efficiency, emphasizing the less conspicuous design errors present in these systems. Although these errors have received little attention to date, they may harm pension schemes along several dimensions, including their fiscal sustainability.     

Bridging Rhetoric and Practice: New Perspectives on Barriers to Gendered Change

ABSTRACT

This article presents a new methodology, Gender Knowledge Contestation Analysis, and uses it to examine the processes under way when transformative gender equality policies, such as gender mainstreaming are implemented. Drawing on data gathered in the European Commission, the findings show the processes linking high-level rhetorical policy statements, strategic policies, and daily working practices. This analysis enables exploration of the mechanisms through which indifference to and nonawareness of gendered policy problems are collectively constituted and methods through which they can be challenged. Findings thus deepen our understanding of barriers to the implementation of gender mainstreaming and the steps required for its effective implementation.     

The Promethean role of Europe: changing narratives of the political and scholarly left

ABSTRACT

The gradual abandoning of the ‘socialism in one country’ doctrine during the post-war period and the intensive transformation of European social democracy in the 1990s pushed social democratic politicians and intellectuals into the front line of advocates of a unified and powerful Europe. They contributed to the inclusion of social democratic and environmentalist values in the EU’s official narrative. The success of European integration and George W. Bush’s presidency created the narrative of the Promethean role of Europe. Scholars with a social democratic or environmentalist background created this narrative and it was also shaped by authors’ national contexts.     

Redefining membership: restrictive rights and categorisation in European Union migration policy

This article analyses European Union (EU) policy-making on the rights of third-country nationals (TCN) against the backdrop of theoretical literature on the transformation of citizenship. The aim is to evaluate why and to which extent EU policy expands citizenship rights to TCNs, thus redefining the criteria for membership in the European polity. The research emphasises the role of norms and frames in policy-making and is based on secondary sources, primary documents and semi-structured interviews. The analysis reveals how the combination of a principled conflict over citizenship and a strategic conflict over competence led to a legal framework characterised by ‘restrictive rights’ and ‘politics of categorisation’. ‘Restrictive rights’ means that membership rights are granted to TCN in principle, but subject to very restrictive conditions. ‘The politics of categorisation’ refers to the political construction of migrant categories that are subject to different rights-regimes. Both phenomena have the ambiguous effect of enabling the expansion of rights to non-citizens while at the same time creating new lines of division and mechanisms of exclusion.